By John Walker on October 14th, 2008 at 2:06 pm.
Valve never seem to take traditional routes for announcing new games. Their head of [Insert Appropriate Title Here], Doug Lombardi, likes to leak teeny bits of information to people when they’re least expecting it. To Kikizo, in an interview published last night, he dropped in something about Episode Three. Like you do. Apparently we could hear news about the game before the end of the year.
During the interview, Kikizo nonchalantly ask about the next episode, and receive a peculiarly forthcoming response.
Kikizo: When are we going to start to hear about Episode Three? Because the gaps seem to be quite long based on the first couple of episodes.
Lombardi: Yeah, the next time you play as Gordon will be longer than the distance between HL2 to Ep1, and Ep1 to Ep2.
Kikizo: Won’t you announce or show anything on Episode 3 this year?
Lombardi: We may at the very end of the year.
Those sneaky rascals. And what’s that comment about playing Gordon, eh? Might we… could it be? I haven’t a clue.
14/10/2008 at 14:21 parm says:
I know where Cargo Cult lives. Maybe we could go and camp outside his house.
14/10/2008 at 14:24 Meat Circus says:
That’s because we’ll be playing as Chell. Gordon will be playable only as a bonus unlockable (Gordon’s Combine Advisor Petting Zoo) which you get for completing an extended and deeply irritating rhythm game that involves shooting a stream of multicolored headcrabs that explode in musical rhythm with G-Man’s erratic diction attempting to wrestle with Girls Aloud’s greatest hits.
14/10/2008 at 14:25 Man Raised by Puffins says:
Half Life 2 to Episode One was about 19 months (One to Two was around 16 months), so that’s April/May 09 at the very earliest then.
I’d imagine they’re keeping quiet so as not to overshadow Left 4 Dead, in a similar manner to Bioware keeping schtum about Mass Effect 2 until Dragon Age is out of the door.
14/10/2008 at 14:26 Real Horrorshow says:
Good. The faster Episode 3 comes out the faster they can ditch the ancient Source engine. Yeah I said it.
14/10/2008 at 14:27 teo says:
I would love it if you made the picture in each summarized post link to the actual post. It’s the easiest thing to click
14/10/2008 at 14:38 Dogman says:
I second that idea.
14/10/2008 at 14:38 John Walker says:
The title isn’t too hard to click on. But we’ll soon be opening a summer school for improving people’s mouse orientation and click skills.
14/10/2008 at 14:39 Meat Circus says:
Yes, goodness knows Valve *surely* has no further need of an engine that allows them to produce gorgeous-looking games that runs on even the most mediocre hardware.
14/10/2008 at 14:39 MonkeyMonster says:
Hahahahahahahahahahaha – ahhh thank you for that Mr Walker I almost cried and need such cheering up!
Muchos Gracias Senor.
14/10/2008 at 14:41 subedii says:
I’m pretty doubtful of a character change. I’m guessing that either Episode 3 is simply going to take a longer time to come out, or he could be hinting at a side game not in the direct continuity where there’s a different character involved.
Who knows, guess we’ll have to wait until the end of the year, assuming he DOES announce anything.
14/10/2008 at 14:47 itsallcrap says:
They’d better actually tell us WTF is going on in Ep3.
If I’ve waited this long just to see Alyx disappear in the grasp of a load of Combine Advisors and a “to be continued” sign, I won’t be impressed.
14/10/2008 at 14:47 Real Horrorshow says:
@ Meat Circus:
You’re joking right? I know Valve are PC gaming gods and practically untouchable so we have to pretend they’re always right and true when they’re not, but besides cases where the game is stylized (TF2) or where the graphics are intentionally simplified (Portal), Source is dated as hell. Source games aren’t exactly ugly yet but it’s getting close. The visuals in Left 4 Dead are barely up to the standard of most mediocre console games.
14/10/2008 at 14:48 Lollerskater says:
Episode 3: Barney finds a mute girl named Chell and together they fight the evil Combine-overlords!
14/10/2008 at 14:54 Spork! says:
Meat Circus says:
That’s because we’ll be playing as Chell. Gordon will be playable only as a bonus unlockable (Gordon’s Combine Advisor Petting Zoo) which you get for completing an extended and deeply irritating rhythm game that involves shooting a stream of multicolored headcrabs that explode in musical rhythm with G-Man’s erratic diction attempting to wrestle with Girls Aloud’s greatest hits.
For the love of God, someone make it. You have my money.
14/10/2008 at 14:56 Cousin says:
TF2 is gorgeous but the “realistic” source games look pretty (technically, not art direction) rubbish next to UE3 stuff, let alone CryEngine 2. An upgrade might not make sense from a systems requirements perspective, granted, but they’ll pretty much have to have a new engine up and running for the next console generation in 2-3 years anyway, Source really won’t cut it for that market.
14/10/2008 at 15:00 phuzz says:
@teo, surely playing computery games for years has heightened you click reflexes to the point where you can hit a single pixel link? In fact, RPS is too mainstream! You should only be able to post a comment if you can find the single pixel link that’s hidden in a random place on each story!
That would stop crap like this comment being posted for starters.
14/10/2008 at 15:03 A-Scale says:
@ real horrorshow
The Source engine is perfect and will serve for at least a few more years. It is well optimized and just realistic enough to give one that illusion of being in the game. Crap like Crysis isn’t any better of a game because of its engine, and in fact I’d argue its significantly worse. We hit the drop off point of diminishing returns as far as graphical advancements go with the Source engine. I for one applaud Valve for getting Source to sing before moving on, and for making incremental advancements with each episode. Thanks, Valve.
14/10/2008 at 15:05 The Hammer says:
Worth noting too, that Crysis: Warhead had reduced system specs. Obviously Crytek caught onto the fact that people who don’t have the specs to run your game generally won’t buy it.
14/10/2008 at 15:08 Pace says:
The first impression I got after reading that quote was that there would be a longer gap within the half-life timeline. I mean ep1 followed immediately after HL2, ep2 immediately followed ep1, maybe there will be a gap of some years within the game, like between HL1 & HL2.
(parm; get some info on Minerva while you’re there, will ya? Or maybe you’ve already got some?)
14/10/2008 at 15:08 cyrenic says:
@Cousin
I thought Bioshock, particularly in things like facial animations, looked nowhere near as good as HL2: EP2.
14/10/2008 at 15:14 Mogs says:
Bring back Adrian Shepherd!
14/10/2008 at 15:19 Meat Circus says:
Presumably, the only non-mod Source game we’ll be seeing released in Her Majesty’s Year 2008 will be Left4Dead.
We’ll see how ‘dated’ that looks imminently, I should expect.
14/10/2008 at 15:20 Maximum Fish says:
Source is fine. So long as it’s used right (Vampire Bloodlines, Dark Messiah managed somehow not to). Episode 2 looked great, and i spent more time stopping to ‘take in sights’ in that game than any other in recent memory save Crysis and Bioshock (the former because of the amazing graphics, and let’s be fair -it kind of forced you to, and the latter because of the art design).
Source kicks the everliving shit out of Unreal 3, which is behind like 85% of console games (arbitrary made-up statistic, for all of the bibliography nazis), and i appreciate that it does so with modest hardware requirements.
I do think Valve has become enshrined in impervious armor of fanyboyism, but i don’t think the source engine is something you can legitimately knock them for. That’s my opinio anyways.
14/10/2008 at 15:22 Maximum Fish says:
By which i mean “opinion”. What happened to the edit thing anyway?
14/10/2008 at 15:24 parm says:
pace: None that isn’t already public, I’m afraid. Apparently he has a very big monitor, now, though.
14/10/2008 at 15:33 The Sombrero Kid says:
i think you should make the entire website clickable and make it direct you to specific parts of the post based on where you clicked (inversely proportional to the x coordinate multiplied by the y coordinate over 10) that way if you acidently click your mouse you’re punished with having to read the article from half way down
14/10/2008 at 15:36 Dr_demento says:
Their commitment to not pushing the graphical envelope is one of the best things about Valve – odd that no-one else has realised how much it limits your potential userbase to design a game for CryEngine 2 rather than Source.
That said, Source is starting to look a little dated, but I think Valve should try and replace it with a worth heir; pretty, yes, and with clever physics and maybe something new (euphoria? Go on, Gabe, buy them then incorporate it into Source 2 exclusively and watch Epic cry), but given their commitment to the long-term survival prospects of PC gaming they’d be making a mistake to concentrate on self-shadowing over versatility. I’m confident they’ll make the right choice.
14/10/2008 at 15:38 Alec Meer says:
If people do wanna discuss changes/problems with the site tech, could y’all do it over in the relevant forum thread rather than stumble off-topic in post comments, please? Thanks, darlings.
14/10/2008 at 15:39 subedii says:
I have a very hard time visualising how “crap” an engine Source is supposed to be now when I play something like Episode 2. Or Team Fortress 2. Or Portal
Yes, I’ve played Crysis on high settings, yes it looks very good and has all the technical baubles attached. But Episode 2 also looked really good, the ant-lion caves, the open vistas with the massive portal in the background. Far more important than raw technical capability of the engine is the art style and how it’s implemented.
Over time Source has been improving, and I’d happily say it’s got more than enough visual punch to allow the spectacular art design to come through, and that’s the most important thing. So it doesn’t use the latest DX10 volumetric shaders yet, I’m not going to complain when the engine still manages to amaze me with what it’s showing me.
14/10/2008 at 15:40 Bananaphone says:
Unreal 3 is ugly as fuck. Source may be old but at least it doesn’t make everything look like it’s covered in plastic.
14/10/2008 at 15:45 Andrew Wills says:
@ Real Horrorshow
http://www.albatros44.de/nuernberg/nnf1.jpg
http://www.interlopers.net/images/spotlight/img6_1.jpg
That’s the sort of thing the Source engine can pull off… Easily equal to Unreal 3, Crysis etc. It’s the fastest, most versatile engine around, if (like Maximum Fish said) used correctly.
Almost all users can play Source games, as they are so scalable, with a more than acceptable frame rate. Hence why the Steam Stats show over 100,000 people currently playing Source games/mods, and 27 people playing Unreal Tournament 3.
14/10/2008 at 16:04 StalinsGhost says:
It makes sense that we’ll hear more soon to be honest. Maybe with the release of Left4Dead? I mean, after L4D, Valve wont have any officially announced games in development besides portal. I’m sure we’ll hear something soon basically.
14/10/2008 at 16:30 faint says:
Andrew Willis – Look at the texturing on that lamppost in the foreground. It’s horrible. The second one doesn’t even have grass, and the tree leaves are clearly made of 2D planes.
I think they prove the case against Source much better than arguing for it. Beside, screenies are not the point, the point is that real-time, on inexpensive hardware like a 50 quid GF8600, Source doesn’t impress compared to other stuff. It’s solid, it runs fast (which makes it ideal for multi), but it looks dated.
14/10/2008 at 16:42 cqdemal says:
@ Andrew Wills
Those shots, especially the second one, show how Source is well behind Unreal 3 and CryEngine 2 in terms of technology. Poor textures, low-polygon environments, static sprite-based vegetation, etc.
Even the lighting, which seems to be the best element from these shots, look nowhere near what CryEngine 2 can do. Try taking a screenshot of Crysis Warhead when sunlight is shining through a break in the jungle.
Source is a great engine with decent visual appeal and superb performance, but it’s undeniably creaking.
14/10/2008 at 16:46 Bursar says:
I’d also point out that the source engine of today is not the same as it was in 2004. Ep2 looks much better than HL2 for example.
The hardware issue is a big one. Through Steam Valve have a pretty good idea of the hardware of their userbase. It really isn’t economically viable to blow vast sums of money developing a hyper realistic engine if the only people who’ll benefit are 5% of your target audience. That way leads to bankruptcy and/or being bought by EA .
On the other hand it also wouldn’t surprise me if Valve had some boffins working on a brand new engine which they’ll announce out of the blue when they’re good and ready!
14/10/2008 at 16:53 iainl says:
Going off Man Raised by Puffins’ calculations, an announcement before the end of the year (but after Left4Dead has sold lots of copies) is about right if the game will turn up next summer.
14/10/2008 at 16:55 Y3k-Bug says:
I love that all of the comparisons being used against the Source engine are with titles that are completely inferior gameplay-wise to anything Valve has ever made.
Art direction > Game engine.
14/10/2008 at 17:01 JonFitt says:
So Episode 2.5 features you playing as Judith Mossman in the frozen North!
14/10/2008 at 17:10 Styngent says:
The best thing about episodic gaming is you get small yet powerful gaming experiences with little chronological distances in between.
Wait, what i actually mean is you wait years for another slice of questionable tech demo for last years big FPS engine with insultingly small pieces of revelation drip fed to the public over months and months.
Keep up the good work Valve!
14/10/2008 at 17:16 Sensitive Artist says:
Have to agree with all of the Source apologists here. I’d much rather have a game where they spent all of their time and money on making it fun than on making my hardware cry.
I just finished Crysis Warhead and yeah, at “gamer” or “enthusiast” settings, it looks better than Source games (though I should point out that the engine is not just textures and lighting, but physics — if you have Crysis at low settings, you get no destructible environment). It was OK, but honestly my desire to replay it compared to any of Valve’s games is about 50:1. I’d much rather have a game I want to replay immediately than one I uninstall shortly after finishing.
The slavish devotion to “good graphics” can definitely be detrimental, and I say this as a sucker who just bought a new Radeon 4870 and who is very much in the caught up in the graphics arms race.
14/10/2008 at 17:17 Sensitive Artist says:
Obviously, that ratio should be 1:50, not 50:1.
14/10/2008 at 18:06 tualo says:
“all of the comparisons being used against the Source engine are with titles that are completely inferior gameplay-wise to anything Valve has ever made.”
I think I can safely say that Bioshock is a better game than Half-Life Ricochet…
Do people seriously believe that Valve couldn’t make a good Half-Life 3 in the Crysis engine?
14/10/2008 at 18:52 The Dark One says:
@Gravatar Maximum Fish:
About Bloodlines- they were using a pre-release version of the engine, so it’s not really fair to compare its visuals/performance to the other games. It doesn’t even use the default Source pathfinnding or lighting systems because Valve hadn’t completed them in time for Troika to use them.
14/10/2008 at 18:53 Maximum Fish says:
If you watch (play?) the developer commentary stuff on the Half-Life episodes, one of the most recurring themes is how the design focused on “performance budgeting”, balancing wide-base playability with impressive visuals. Low poly environments, skyboxes, whatever, are all used to minimize the loss of fidelity and to maximize the number of people who can enjoy the game at playable framerates.
This is not so much a strike against the engine (which has been keeping abreast of new technology fairly well, if not close to the cryengine 2 level), but more rather a trait of Valve’s design philosophy, one i happen to agree with. I’d much rather be impressed by artful and effective use of shaders and other fancy whatsihutsits and great art design than a buffet of cutting edge effects that lose novelty after 30 minutes and limit the player base to 15 people with repurposed server farms.
14/10/2008 at 18:59 General_Crespin says:
Bioshock has a good art style, but up close, the textures are crap.
14/10/2008 at 19:09 martin says:
It’s simple:
Source visuals Crysis
14/10/2008 at 19:10 martin says:
It’s simple:
Source visuals Crysis14/10/2008 at 19:11 martin says:
me stupid:
Source’s visuals are inferior tor CryEngine2′s visuals.
Half Life 2 is a much better game than Crysis
14/10/2008 at 19:28 DigitalSignalX says:
On an X-Play review of the Orange Box, they interviewed Gabe who said “The main character in Portal will play an important part in the Half-Life universe. She will have important relationships with some of the main characters in Episode 3.” Food for thought.
14/10/2008 at 19:59 IvanHoeHo says:
The source engine is indeed getting old, and it is the texturing/bump mapping artists that are keeping it alive. The lack of excessive shininess also helps, of course.
14/10/2008 at 20:20 Simon Jones says:
Source is far from perfect – load times still seem oddly long compared to the likes of UE3, CoD4 and especially Crysis (which was bizarrely swift). It also has that annoying tendency to stutter like a crazed loon when changing options (which reminds me of the only thing that really impressed me about Crysis – the ease with which the engine could rapidly update as you changed settings). And the seeming inability to play any sound while loading a level.
Technologically it could be regarded as ‘behind’ compared to other engines but, as others have said, that’s a bit irrelevant, really. Graphics technology is fascinating, but if it plays that crucial a part in your gaming then I can’t help but think you’re slightly missing the point.
But then again, almost all my favourite games favour art design and gameplay over technology, so maybe I’m just wired that way. :)
14/10/2008 at 21:03 Down Rodeo says:
I think Source is pretty fantastic. One of the things that Valve talked about was the plugin-based nature of the engine, allowing them to change bits as they pleased (though some things, such as HDR, required larger rewrites). Am I right in thinking they use Havok physics, or a partially rewritten version? So in theory, they could take advantage of the potential additions to Intel processors.
But also, why have crazy mad graphics when you can have a beautiful game (as many have pointed out).
Yeah, I stole all my information from the commentaries. This is another reason why Valve have massive fanboy status and, quite probably, why they deserve it.
14/10/2008 at 21:04 Source enthusiast says:
source isn’t perfect, but episode 2 looks prettier than any other fps, including crysis
14/10/2008 at 21:17 Paul Moloney says:
Wow, is it that bad? I wonder how they will blame that on piracy…
P.
14/10/2008 at 21:52 Saflo says:
That’s just on Steam, Paul.
14/10/2008 at 22:15 eyemessiah says:
Personally, I agree about the diminishing returns on engine improvements these days. I was lucky enough to be able to play Crysis on high\very high and I although it presented some nice vistas, I didn’t think there was anything particularly striking about it. In fact there was often a correlation between the quality of the gameplay and the quality of the visuals. For instance some of the internal alien environments looked like they had had a lot of love lavished on them, but proved to be the least popular levels to play through. By contrast the stuff that was fun in the game tended to revolve around crawling through ground foliage that looked horrible. Maybe if they had cut some corners on the engine they could have spent more time on the gameplay?
Personally I’d rather that valve spent less money on upgrading source, and more money on art, writing and environment design. For the past few years it has been the games that succeeded on these levels that have impressed me most, and not the games with the most powerful rendering engines.
14/10/2008 at 22:20 eyemessiah says:
That said, I agree that some low rez texturing in Portal & Ep2 (eg. the bright green antlion tunnels, remember them? horrible textures – I thought it was a bug!) let these games down quite a bit. I’d like to see source turn up the texture resolutions a bit for EP3.
14/10/2008 at 22:31 toejam316 says:
How could it possibly said the Source Engine is dated? Have you played Team Fortress 2 on high recently? It looks amazing, even though it’s a year old! You, sir, are freaking nuts.
Not to mention the Source Engine is completely modular, and currently grounded firmly in Direct X 9. All Valve need to do is recode the specific renderer and bam! Direct X 10!
The reason they haven’t? The support for it is tiny.
The stats from the latest Steam Hardware Survey state 9.66% of their total userbase have PCs that have DX10 enabled hardware AND Vista.
Of that 9.66%, 6.13% have GPUs which are good enough to actually be used for gaming. roughly 4.27% of the GPUs are actually good enough to be able to maintain a reasonable framerate with DX10 features enabled.
4.27% of the total userbase, including duplicate steam accounts.
Now then, doesn’t it seem they’d sorta be shooting themselves in the foot by pumping more cash into graphically heavy titles based on Direct X 10 when roughly 4.27% of their userbase could actually use these features, assuming they buy the game?
14/10/2008 at 23:17 Valentin Galea says:
It’s simple really:
In EP3 you are the bastard child of Alyx and Gordon, and your first mission is to gather wood for the fire with the gravity gun.
Then you’re off to the Combine Elementary School, where you make friends with Strider Jr.
At the end of the day, you’re tucked into bed by Uncle G-Man who tells you the bedtime story of “The Black Mesa Incident and the Sleeping Nihilanth”.
14/10/2008 at 23:23 Eli Just says:
Sounds like more of the Portal story line to me.
14/10/2008 at 23:39 Valentin Galea says:
That’s because in EP3 your only weapon is the Companion Cube.
15/10/2008 at 01:01 Radiant says:
Also the source netcode is really shoddy.
15/10/2008 at 01:26 wien says:
Of course TF2 looks beautiful. It’s one of the better looking games out there. The point you seem so eager to miss though is that it’s good looks are not due to the Source engine being a technical masterpiece, but rather Valve’s excellent art-direction. Imagine what they could do with a better engine.
The fact is that Source is lagging seriously behind current hardware in its core architecture, leading to poor utilization of modern hardware. This is why games using it generally are extremely CPU bound, even though they don’t push anywhere near the poly-counts for instance Crysis does. It also limits what the artists can do because they have to limit themselves to what the engine can cope with. This will become a serious problem unless they stop pushing the graphics further or rewrite at the very least the renderer.
15/10/2008 at 03:02 Monkfish says:
Source was designed from the start to be extensible. This means that the engine can be built upon over time; the Source engine as it was in 2004 is quite a different beast to what it has become. It’s just that some people’s perception is that the engine’s been around for a while, so it “must be outdated”. Not really…
Over the last four years, Valve have added many of the features present in other engines such as HDR, rim lighting, particle effects that are computed entirely on GPUs and self-shadowed bumpmapping. And for the build used for Left 4 Dead, they’ve added physics-based animation and SSAO amongst other goodies. Source is far from outdated in the feature category.
Many effects, such as the skin on the Vortigaunts or the way that Source renders water are more than comparible to what’s possible in other engines percieved to be more “up-to-date”.
Also, neither polycounts or texture quality are direct limitations of Source. Just take a look at FakeFactory’s Cinematic Mod for a demonstration of what Source is capable of in that regard. That mod, though, illustrates why Valve have wisely chosen to cater for as wide an audience as possible, by optimising textures and polycounts to a point where they’re perfectly acceptable for gameplay, but don’t have a negative impact on performance. The Cinematic Mod is a 7 gigabyte download and is so memory-hungry, it encounters problems when run on 32bit versions of Windows – hardly acceptable for most PCs.
Anyway, I don’t think that things like polycounts or texture quality in current Source games are an issue – not unless you spend the entire game studying ground textures or pressing your virtual nose against the walls! After all, we’re not playing static screenshots, y’know.
15/10/2008 at 04:18 lilgamefreek says:
Well for one, there is also the often talked about “leveling off” of graphical improvements in recent games, but also I think that the blurriness sometimes adds to the realism in a game. Believe it or not, but I think there is a point where things become to detailed and too realistic. An example I like to point out is the contrast between the effects in Jurassic Park and iRobot or Journey to the Center of the Earth. Jurassic Park’s CGI is obviously less sophisticated than the more recent movies, but somehow the dinosaurs feel far realer. I like to think that it’s because they are a little blurry and that you can’t see ever individual scale and wrinkly on their skin, that makes this so.
15/10/2008 at 04:36 Sensitive Artist says:
Here’s a gallery of shots comparing the Source engine to Cryengine and Unreal3.
15/10/2008 at 08:41 Dain says:
Also, look at the number of source mods compared to the number of mods in… well, any other engine.
15/10/2008 at 08:57 MeestaNob! says:
Good as confirmed then: Episode 3 = Barney.
Fucking Awesome!
15/10/2008 at 09:37 mister k says:
Please don’t let Vavle switch from source engine, because then us poor laptop users won’t be able to play the damn thing anymore. I did actually have to turn the graphics right down to run down episode 1 (theres a couple of set pieces which would crash my computer otherwise). I suspect Valve realise, sensibly, that people don’t actually want to pay however many hundreds of pounds just so their textures “don’t look dated”. The games look amazing already, anything else is incremental improvement.
I’d be happier with smoother performance- i.e. lower loading times and less menu stutter- rather than slighty shinier textures.
Honestly, listen to yourselves… “that lampost looks flat” ARe you freaking kidding me?
15/10/2008 at 10:03 Rhalle says:
Source is a beautiful game engine, way better than that pseudo-photo-realistic Crytek crap. Source has a depth and artfulness that no other engine even comes close to.
The reason it looks shitty in L4D is because of cross-platforming compromises; the old L4D character models = PC, the new ones = consolitis in action.
15/10/2008 at 10:08 MeestaNob! says:
Furthermore, regarding the Source engine, it’s been a wonderful servant to Valve and has proven to be very flexible, but it is certainly time for a change.
One thing that strikes me about the Source engine is how vastly superior it is compared to anything in regards to facial expression and skeletal animations. For all it’s beauty Crysis is let down poorly in this department (eg Crysis Warhead, the emotional aftermath of Psycho’s fight with the Korean in the river… His face hardly moves and yet the voice acting depicts a face viciously contorted with grief…).
I think by the Episode 3 is out we’ll begin hearing more than whispers about Source 2 and possibly HL3 shortly afterward. This is quite a long way away, so Crysis spec PCs will be commonplace. I’m excited at the prospect of near life like visuals combined with excellent story telling and acting.
Valve DOES need to move on soon though, they cant upgrade grandpa’s axe forever.
15/10/2008 at 12:13 Tuor says:
As MeestaNob! says, I think we’ll be getting something focused on Barney pretty soon. Notice that there was neither hide nor hair (nor mention) of Barney in Ep 2.
Barney, IMO, was off on a mission.
15/10/2008 at 13:38 Andrew Simpson says:
In the future, Source games are certain to become less and less CPU bound as they overhaul sub-systems to use their new threading system. Already it’s used for things like particle effects, but it’ll branch out into the renderer, physics, etc.
I don’t think Valve will ever drop Source entirely, there’s not really much point, as an engine is after all a collection of tools for making games with. If you need a hammer, you don’t buy a whole new set of tools, you just replace the hammer!
That said, there are some aspects of Source’s core underlying technology that are very Quake-era in their conception, and probably could do with a good ripping out and replacing. Stuff like changing the way maps are stored to allow seamless loading, that kind of thing, and doing that will require a fairly major overhaul, but of course that won’t touch in a major way things like sound or input, so that code will probably stay the same.
It’s the old Athenian ship question, essentially, how much do you need to change before it’s new?
15/10/2008 at 13:46 Jeremy says:
I’m perfectly happy with the source engine. But then again, I much prefer stylized animation over something trying to be realistic. If they want realistic, they should go out and videotape some people. Give me quality art, voice acting and gameplay over anything else. That’s why I only have a PC and a Wii.
15/10/2008 at 20:17 Bodo says:
OH COME ON. Valve Is´nt so stupid. They know what is game engine and they know what their customers can run. Everybody doesnt have High-End PC for 600 bucks. And comparing 5 years old Source Engine to the Hyper-Realistic CryEngine 2 that uses all new lighting and shadowing techniques ? THATS BULLSHIT. I think that Crysis was developed for testing, benchmarking and blowing up new graphics cards. That game doesnt beat Half-Life 2 in a terms of gameplay. When you buy Crysis and lagging like hell on every resolution and every detail setting, Crytek will probalby laugh into your face that you are a noob that cant run this beast on 16xQFSAA with 16xAF. But who gives a shi*? I can run HL2 Episode Two on Pentium 4 and 8800 GTS on very high with 16xQFSAA and 16xAF without ANY problems and i get like 40000K better gameplay than i would get with Crysis. CONCLUSION : CryEngine 2 is a future of game graphics. SOURCE is the most comfort and the nicest engine ever created (because it can run on every machine and its shader-based rendering looks incredible). SOURCE BEST. CRYENGINE ONLY FOR FANATICS. Long Live Source, Steam And Valve … The Future Of PC Gaming.
17/10/2008 at 17:55 Scandalon says:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – source needs to be fixed. Some people keep mentioning how much time and care Valve put into their game – my contention is I wish they’d put the same care into their work, without having to do so much, well, work. (Then maybe their “episodic” content wouldn’t take 2 years each…)
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/unrealtournament2007/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-44602754&pid=928117 Sums it up nicely.
27/04/2013 at 17:00 Pengwertle says:
Hello! I come from five years into the future, the year 2013, to tell you Episode 3 has STILL not been announced.